I want to know what would be a perfect Guard system for cities (or where ever guards are needed). The previous attempts have been...OK. They really could have used a little more depth. Morrowind seemed more genuine than Oblivion with the guard system. I don't want skyrim Guards to be guided by magic GPS systems with super agility and the ability to pause time and force me down to two options in .2 seconds, I want more options!

There were some good mods to this kind of system. I've really enjoyed reading some ideas on detective NPCs as well, just hoping it gets some deeper attention.

I really hope it isn't like oblivion...


That is all

Main thing is to make a person have to actually yell for help to call guards, and even then they should have to be within a certain distance of someone else. Also, how about Horses that can't report you

From there make so bounties under a set amount (anything under say 1000, the cost of murder) stay in one city for a while and then slowly goes away. Moderately high bounties will travel from region to region after a few days/hours. Maybe by courier, so you can keep your crimes in one area by taking any messenger out. Too high a bounty will make so you actually can't pay it and you HAVE to go to jail. Any higher past that, no yielding, no going to jail. A kill on sight issue is ordered and bounty hunters go after you.

That sounds good to me.

That sounds perfect to me! They should hire you...

I imagine there will be various types of guards that will handle things differently. The guards in Nord cities will behave differently than the Imperial guards. How they differ, I have no idea. I have not been to Skyrim so I do not know. It's also impossible to tell how the new AI is going to react.

We can't really ask for everything as far as realism goes. It's still just a game and, as with everything, you gotta suspend your disbelief to a certain extent.

I start college for Game and Simulation Programming in March. Maybe in 4 years they will

(Don't want to kiss Bethesda's Collective ass but using the Construction Set in Oblivion and later the GECK (to a lesser extent) is what inspired me to go to school for Game Design. I am hoping to either work for BGS, Blizzard, Rockstar or Ubisoft someday.)

I wrote something about this a couple of days ago.

http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1164296-criminal-activities/page__p__17115914__hl__crime__fromsearch__1#entry17115914
Here were the main points
-Guards don’t draw swords unless it’s a major crime (murder, you know really bad stuff), for minor crimes they try and subdue you; give them a truncheon or something to try and knock you out. If the guard knocks you down you get put in irons and hauled off to jail.
-Regional crimes, no more every guard, everywhere, knows you’re a shoplifter 3 seconds after you do it, maybe by implementing some couriers going from town to town on occasion, petty crimes get sent along with other news and may be disseminated within a week, but mass murder and major heists get their own special messenger and people hear about it in a day or two.
-If a guard thinks you are being suspicious (sneaking around town, out at night with a sack marked “loot”) they should try to question you, giving an opportunity for some sort of speechcraft challenge, if you win, they leave you alone, maybe slightly more vigilant, otherwise you are asked to come to come to the guardpost for further questioning.
-Better detection of stolen goods, why would anyone care that you stole that particular apple six months ago? As said elsewhere, some items (food, forks, random junk) no one should care if it’s stolen or you simply can’t tell one from the other. Larger things that people care about, but may not be able to distinguish (a vase, a sword) should be tracked as stolen but the risk of carrying it should vary by time and location and have some sort of indicator, while important and unique items are always considered stolen and you have to rely on a fence to sell it for you. A possible method of how stolen items should be tracked is by using a hand indicator like in oblivion and changing the color to indicate how likely you are to be caught.
Something like:
Red: people are on the lookout, confiscated if arrested, only sellable to fences.
Orange: moderate vigilance, may have problems selling locally or to honest types.
Green: no one looking, should have no problem selling.
White: item not reported yet, can sell, but likely to have problems if reported later.
With the progression of white to red to orange to green and then the theft marker is removed.
The speed of the transitions should be something like a week for little cheap things, to maybe a month or two for the lager stuff that isn’t that unique.

Anyway, those were my thoughts on the matter.

I posted this in the other thread. It's relevant to this one, too.

Damn them and there rockcam.

If I'm completely invisible I should be able to murder someone in the streets and get away with it to an extent. Guards should not be psychic super hero's. And I would love to actually role play a murderer or thief without being bombarded with the infinite amount of soldiers that couldn't do what one pantsless orc did.

I hated getting "you cannot fast travel at this time because a guard is running to find you from the neighboring province".

While I have faith in Bethesda that the new Guard system in Skyrim will be much more... how should I put this... realistic, if Skyrim comes out and the Guards are still psychic, I'll happily write a Skyrim version of my Guard Overhaul (though based on what I saw in FO3, this likely won't be the case as much).

What with all these crime threads, I'm surprised nobody's mentioned guards' reactions to NPC crimes in Oblivion. In Oblvion an NPC with a low responsibility rating would steal food off tables or by pickpocketing NPCs. If the NPC was caught, the guards would attack the NPC. Witnesses would sometimes attack the guards, then more guards would attack the witness until eventually the whole town basically consumed itself.

In Skyrim, if NPCs can still commit crimes it'd be nice to see them spend a couple nights in jail or something similar, not just a death penalty for pickpocketing an apple.

Damn right.
I demand equality.

I never saw all that much NPC crime, that wasn't directed at me.
It'd be nice if guards would assist in your favour once in a while, and not try to arrest me for assault after jumping in front of my sword in a melee.

Too much attention gets focused on how the guards are the enemy of the player, but I think Modders are missing an opportunity to make guards more friendly to the player via a "Reverse Thievery Mod" which would make a random thief in some cities occasionally try to steal something from YOU. The first change toward making such a mod would require all of the citizens to walk closer to you via careful scripting changes. Once the player is used to seeing dozens of characters passing in front and behind him more often, you could then slip in a thief to try and steal something. If you didn't notice it, and the thief gets away, there could be some scurrilous laughter as the culprit turns the corner never to be seen again, this to let you know you should check your inventory. A special rune could help you figure out what was stolen (this would be a cheat for those who couldn't bear not knowing what was stolen). If you report the theft to the guards (when you didn't see it happen) then this may result in a 10-20% chance that they return the item to you within 2 days. After 2 days, there is no chance.

If you did feel the thief steal something from you, your character could automatically react by shouting "Thief!" and the guards would immediately respond, coming to arrest the thief, and if he won't come willingly, striking him down in the streets, allowing you to pick over his dead body. Maybe the rule would be you can take your item back, plus one extra item in repayment. If you take more than one item extra, then you're a thief too. That would balance out somewhat the fact that you were stolen from before and didnt' notice it, but still keep the player from making out like a bandit everytime a thief tried to steal from him and he caught the thief in the act. The mod is supposed to add the feeling of fear that comes from being a victim of thievery, and could teach those thieving players what it feels like when the tables are turned.

I'm getting off topic now, so let me return to Guards with a few additional points:

1) Guards could be more useful to the player: I've detailed one way this could be implemented, but I'm sure there are others. Some games make guards the map keepers, who tell you where to go. Or ... what if you were carrying an expensive artifact through town (with thieves on the prowl) and you asked the guards to give you an escort through the city to your destination? They could assign new guards to do their job at the gate (Radiant Story could assign these guards a new quest to follow you to your location) and then assign an attack (random human NPC's as mercenaries or thieves besetting you) and have like this epic battle right in the middle of town. The NPC's standing around when the battle occurs could all begin fleeing for their lives, clearing out, so by the end of the battle there are no more people anywhere in the streets. That would be a cool way to involve guards as your allies, instead of always the government agents arresting you for crimes.

2) Guards need to be used more by the game itself. All they do now is stand there gawking. At least in Morrowind, although annoying, they seemed to always be watching YOU, which I found unnerving. Why not conduct raids into town that require all of the guards to leave their posts and come to tackle the threat all at once? If something like this happened, maybe a player playing a Thief character could use the distraction to slip into some high-security mansions unnoticed by anyone.

3) Why are all guards obedient servants to the State? You mean to say there are NO corrupt guards with their own agendas? Why don't they ever steal directly from the player through intimidation, requiring the player to go to some other official and report THEM? To then have a further escalation of events where the player has to help root out the corruption in the city. NWN2 did this very scenario very well.

4) Why can't a guard need the player to help them? Why are they all so faceless and useless to the Story of the TEH games so far? Why can't a guard have a sister that was kidnapped, but he isn't allowed to leave his post, so he wants to hire you to find them?

just some questions... and some Mod opportunities for those that get what I'm talking about. Later. And thanks.

I'm probably one of the few who found the guards in Oblivion pure awesome. But if they take a more realistic aproch to them this time, I guess I could live with it. :thumbsup:

my scum senses are tingling....

I want their psychic powers,

I would be very happy if the guards in Skyrim behave as the ones of your mod. In addittion, something similar to your disguise mod would be great.

Take out guards seeing everything

I hope we can bribe some "bad" guards to look the other way when my character hurts people. How they can make that work, well I think that would be hard

if your talkin bout there funny gimick like oblivions stop right there criminal scum and there almost psychic perception and morrowind near invincible guards
i think skyrims guards will have booming deep voices

I think we can all agree that we don't want psychic guards that know all and see all. I just really want them to say "STOP RIGHT THERE CRIMINAL SCUM"

Honestly, I like the idea of guards, but there were way too many guards compared to average citizens: we're not living in Fascist Italy, we're living in Tamriel. I think that guards should have better patrols, as in groups wandering from one area to another, more roles (bowman, captain etc) the rank and file should be more killable (TEN levels above? Really?), and finally should have their own quests for the player, even if they're not fleshed out to the point of a full faction.

A few little things: off-duty guards should be seen in bars etc, not only in the barracks. Bribery would be nice. Guards posted to the residences of the more important townspeople gives the world more depth, and makes break-ins a bit more challenging. Now this isn't quite a guard request, but using the radiant story system to create a few random unmarked quests for thieves with the chief danger being guards could be interesting.

So yeah: guards are more fun when they are not a Deus ex Machina of the law, when they are diverse, when you get to actually fight them sometimes, and when you can see them out and about in groups.

If I slap Jensine, and God knows she has it comin', and the town guard loves me and his disposition is at 90+, then when Jensine reports me for slapping her, I expect the guard to not only disregard her wild accusations, but to slap her again for me as well.